Student comments from EPID600 Fall 2012
(in order by date submitted -
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(About student comments)
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1:
“NOTE FROM VIC: In reviewing the (non-anonymous) responses to case study 15, I noted the following. For question 5 (number of hours spent per week), students in the classroom course spent an average of 7.5 hours on the course per week and Internet students 10.8. Many responses included the time for the examinations, but some did not, so these 8.5 and 12 may be better overall estimates. Students did report spending 10-20 hours on weeks with exams.”
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(Case study 15 summarized by Vic,
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2:
“Just the other day, I decided to investigate a particular subject which I didn't know much about. Turns out that there is a wealth of epidemiological literature on the subject. I was able to successfully understand and interpret the findings of multiple studies and apply this new knowledge in a productive way. Basic epidemiology is fundamental to understanding the results of studying so many government-funded studies. These concepts should be taught in grade school instead of e.g. social studies.”
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3:
“A difficult course. Interesting concepts, but I am still very uncertain about my understanding of Epid.”
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4:
“Well organized course. I enjoyed the material.”
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5:
“Vic is a very good instructor and his epid 600 class has a lot of interesting instructional material.”
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6:
“I appreciate the Tuesday lab being immediately following the lecture. That way, you can knock out both in one evening. I found the emails from Evan ("What's coming up next week in EPID") before lecture to be extremely helpful for preparing and knowing what is due. Weeks that I did not receive these, I found myself wondering what exactly was due and what would be covered in lecture/lab. Also, the second exam was much more manageable time-wise than the first exam, which took 10+ hours to complete. I also enjoyed Exam 3, which was short and to-the-point. My only other recommendation is to allow for more questions about the exams during the week (Mon-Fri) before the exam is due on Friday. The problem is, it's easy to look over the exam over the weekend, but at least for me, I never really developed questions until I actually had time to sit down and complete it. Because my weekends were usually quite busy with other work/studying for other exams, I did not have time to start the EPID exams until Monday or Tuesday before it was due on Friday. Maybe others had the time to start on the weekend... Overall, I enjoyed the lectures (Vic is an intelligent/funny/interactive professor) and the labs (Evan was helpful on case study questions, once he agreed to confirm our group answers).”
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(CourseOver,
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7:
“Many concepts could have been explained much more succinctly and clearly than they were.”
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8:
“The course was too complicated. There were too many forms, too many instructions, and too many exceptions. I spent half the time trying to figure out exactly what was going on. I think streamlining procedures would help everyone, including our professor and TAs, immensely. Lecture and recitation material should have been more organized to deal with the exact concepts studied in case studies each week. A more direct correlation between lecture and case studies would have helped cement new information. I think the scope of the course was too large for an introductory/fundamentals course, and concepts could have been reduced to help students process and encode. Recitations attempted to repeat lecture material in less time, rather than focusing on the key concepts and ensuring that those were understood. Small groups were very effective. Peer learning was crucial to my success in this course. Exams were crammed in, and I didn't feel as though there was enough new material to be assessed. Exams 1 + 2 should have been spaced out and exam 3 should have been cut. Also, I wish I had known the final exam would be closed-note from day 1 to prepare adequately. Exams that reflect the collaborative work we do in case studies would be more reflective of my understanding of the material.”
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9:
“This class was the worst class I've ever taken at Carolina. The lecture and lab were redundant, the take home tests took more than 10 hours on average, and I can honestly say I learned almost nothing in this class.”
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10:
“I found the course interesting, I enjoyed the class materials, and though sometimes frustrating (e.g. word limits, awkward wording), I did find that I learned a lot from the assignments. I really liked that each lab was based on a real study/journal article. I think it is an important skill to be able to understand articles, so I appreciated that part of this class. I also like the labs where we acted as "epidemic investigators".”
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11:
“The exams were extremely difficult and [I] did not feel prepared for them at all. This course was nothing like I was expecting and was not intellectually stimulating at all.”
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12:
“Lecture materials and book readings were unnecessary to succeed in the course”
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13:
“This course is very difficult for an undergraduate student. Limited amount of material to actually submit and no way to apply the learning in class to the case studies.”
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14:
“The exam format really detracts from the course, in my opinion. I think it is easy, especially for graduate students, to come away from the course with a less than optimal understanding of core epidemiology subjects because the exams seemed to be so picky regarding trick questions and the need to "read it like a lawyer." The exams were at a level that should be appropriate for graduate school, but they also made it so that key concepts were not tested well and thus, possibly not learned.”
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15:
“I really wanted to like this course because I can see how important the material is. I think this course would have been just fine, even great, if I was an undergrad. However, as a graduate student, I didn't find spending hours on the case studies each week to be an effective use of my time. As a result, I only did the questions assigned to me- I searched the papers for my answers in order to help my group. I thought the course was very well organized in terms of lecture and lab topics. But again, the case studies were demotivating. I can't think of a better way of doing things, but wanted to provide feedback that it just didn't work for me. I did enjoy reading epid scientific literature- maybe small group discussions, such as a journal club setting, are more graduate student friendly.”
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16:
“I felt that a lot of times the other students and myself were extremely confused about what was happening in the course. Even the TAs seemed to be confused at times as to what was going on.”
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17:
“Personally, Epi was a challenge for me though group work in the lab sessions usually helped”
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18:
“EPID 600 was a required course but did not serve as a tool for learning or retaining information. The course guidelines were vague and the class did not engage students in critical thinking and learning.”
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19:
“Quite frankly, I am disappointed in this course. I absolutely understand the importance of knowing epidemiological perspectives in the field of public health, and yet I feel that I left this course with such minimal knowledge that I will need supplemental learning in the future. The material was presented in such a way that it was difficult to grasp. The exams were long, drawn-out, and far too difficult for an introductory-level class. I have never performed so poorly in a higher-level class, and I do not attribute that to lack of effort. The way the material is presented in this class needs to be re-evaluated so that those of us who are not epidemiology majors (and especially the undergraduates) can leave the class with at least some sense of mastery over these basic concepts.”
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20:
“I felt like Vic is a compassionate and nice teacher. However I did not feel that lectures were always relevant or helpful in mastery of the material. Additionally some exam questions had convoluted wording to the point where they did not assess knowledge of Epi but rather ability to disentangle the wording of the question.”
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21:
“I think Vic is passionate about EPI and cares that his students learn the material. Some parts of the class are clearly organized but I think due to recent changes, others portions of the class were very difficult to follow. In addition, I feel the information covered in the class (considering it was a 600 level course) was too much given the time and type of class.”
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22:
“THE EXAMS WERE SO HARD! Expectations weren't communicated well. However, Vic and the TAs were great and I absolutely love the subject matter. I just wish I better understood what Vic was looking for.”
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23:
“Vic has a teaching style like no other, that was extremely difficult for me to adapt to at first. He does a fabulous job of having students actually critically think through problems and find answers on their own, straying as far away as possible from simply regurgitating answers. At times it was confusing and frustrating, but overall it was a great class. His style of teaching allowed us a lot of ownership in our learning process.”
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24:
“At times, the cumulative workload of exams, case studies, readings, and supplemental assignments took up more time than they should have. Questions written for the exams and case studies were often convoluted and misleading, distracting greatly from the positive learning experience of answering them (once understood). The overall structure of the course for the first few weeks was very confusing, but I got used to it after 3 or 4 cycles. We could have had more guidance going into the first group case study and lab section.”
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26:
“Set-up was not ideal for learning. Tuesday's lecture was repeated in a condense manner by the TA during lab, so it wasn't necessary to go to both. I appreciated that exams were take home but felt I could have learned more if I could have discussed it with others while doing it. I did not enjoy how case studies were set up. It was tedious to go though case study answers with such a large group each week, and I feel I would have learned more by working through them with smaller groups or perhaps in a different format. Overall, it was difficult to track what we were supposed to be learning. I definitely learned, but it would have been helpful to have a more clearly defined purpose of lecture/TA lecture and more concrete examples as opposed to all open ended exams and case studies.”
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27:
“The narrow exam grade distributions indicated that though exams took an exorbitant amount of time to complete, they were ineffective in differentiating students who did and did not understand the material. Because they were open-book, open-note, open-Internet, etc. I suspect that they mostly just varied based on amount of time spent on the exam. Though I thought the format of analyzing articles was a good learning experience, 12-hour exams seen unreasonable and unhelpful in distinguishing students.”
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28:
“I felt the cases studies and exam questions sometimes were more focused on getting us go on a hunt for some relatively minute detail instead of trying to apply our knowledge in a realistic manner. I would have preferred those questions be eliminated and have more that instead were reflective of what I would do in the real world.”
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29:
“This course challenged me because the material was presented so poorly. I was forced to learn everything on my own through assigned readings (which were very good) but felt the lectures and structure of the course did not facilitate learning.”
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30:
“Overall a good course for beginners. But I had already taken an epi course before and knew most of the stuff that was taught. Considering that, I felt I spent a lot of time on doing assignments on stuff that I already knew..”
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31:
“The course was really badly organized. I do not think that the lectures gave me any additional information or communicated the materials in any helpful way. There was major lack of communication between the instructor and the students and I feel like anything I got out of the class was from the book and from my TA, Evan. The exams were way too work intensive and it wasn't even valuable work, it just felt like busy work.”
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32:
“I appreciated that the assessments did not simply ask for recall, they encouraged active and rigorous problem solving skills. I was challenged by several of the exams. I did feel however that at times the questions strayed from the larger important topics. For example, being asked to recalculate how investigators arrived at their results seemed repetitive and did not help me learn the material.”
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33:
“I took an epidemiology course at another university before coming here and when I compare the two I realize how disorganized this one was. I had a really difficult time navigating the course concepts. I know epidemiology concepts are elusive but I think I would have understood them better if the lectures where more structured.”
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35:
“Thought provoking course! My only issue is regarding exams. The time between submission and returned score was too long (I am aware that this grading takes time and I do appreciate the effort put forth by the TAs). I found it difficult to review the questions I struggled with on the exam with the same level of interest in reworking them, or in remembering my thought process at the time. With weeks passing before the questions are reviewed, I feel I learned less from the exams. I also believe I would have learned more from the exams if I were able to work with other students. Often I would work through a difficult problem for hours and sometimes settle on an answer. Being able to work through these problems with another student would have taught me more than the hours I spent alone. I understand that collaboration defeats the purpose of individual evaluation and could encourage some to skate by, but at this level of education I do not believe many students would tolerate another student putting in no work and expecting the answers from their peers. Just my thoughts. Overall good course, great professor & TAs, and interesting topics!”
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36:
“I feel like there was a lot more potential for me to learn, though the way the course was organized made it difficult, if not impossible to take advantage of my instructor's knowledge/understanding of epidemiology. The case studies were incredibly time consuming, and a challenge, though I would have appreciated if they were effective in teaching me the concepts covered in the book/class. They weren't. I would suggest that instead of repeating the concepts covered during lecture, our recitations are spent by having the TA go over the questions from the case study and WHY those are the answers. This would be much more effective for me to learn than listening to what my classmates have to say about the answers: I'm not paying to learn from my peers, I'm paying tuition to learn from an instructor who is going to help me prepare for a career in public health. I am sure I got more out of the class than I give it credit for, but there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.”
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37:
“This course is not useful to Nutrition PhD Students, a more advanced course would be better to serve as the Epid requirement.”
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38:
“As an introductory course, there are a several components in this course that are lacking and need improvement. The class material was very unstructured and it was difficult navigating assignments, readings, lectures, ect. I was disappointed with how this course was taught - if I had not taken a previous Epi course, I would have had a more difficult time understanding the concepts. I thought *basic* epi concepts and methods were lacking and more time (lecture and case studies) should have been spent on this. The course presented a bountiful of materials that required us to think beyond epi concepts, which is good, but there was not enough emphasis on connecting those "profound epi questions" to the actual epi concept! The powerpoints presented during recitation was so much more helpful than lecture and reading materials, it's unfortunate that we only spent 30 minutes/week with this material. Exams and case studies could also be improved. Questions need to be more concise and simple (questions that are no more than 2 sentences)- I thought the exams tested more on reading comprehension than epi concepts. It was frustrating because I had interpreted a few exam questions incorrectly due to confusing phrases, and I didn't realize what was being asked until I received the exam back with points marked off. Overall, the entire course layout needs to be updated and re-designed. Maybe for students who want to learn more about the methods of Epi, it should be communicated to students that EPI 710 may be a better fit.”
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39:
“I thought this course was very intensive. While I learned some of the material, I often find myself looking back thinking I could not absorb everything we were assigned. I also feel like the way the course was organized didn't make much sense to me. I understand that the currency of Public Health is epidemiology and data but it would have been more beneficial for me to learn about specific concrete examples (kind of like the outbreak information) more periodically and especially at the begining of the semester rather than the end.”
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40:
“This course was overall very disappointing for me. Although I expect to pass the course, the organization of exams was horrible. The exams were take-home, and expected to take 8-10 hours, yet most students found themselves spending between 15-20 hours to complete. In addition, the exam questions are often not clear, difficult to decipher what the instructor is asking, and the instructor will not provide feedback or clarification for most questions asked about. Usually, questions on the exams also consists of concepts and ideas that have not yet been taught, in order to "challenge" students, but I feel it would be more fair to propose new topics in lab assignments as opposed to an exam that counts as a heavy weight of your grade. Also, the instructor does not hold office hours and is not available outside of class, except through email. Yet, I have asked the instructor questions regarding my second exam and never heard back from him. The instructor designs the course so labs are used as office hours, but with 30 other people in the labs and a packed agenda for that time, it is impossible to allot time for students to ask specific questions. So, students frequently feel unsupported by the instructors. Also, the grading of exams seems very subjective. The instructor does not grade exams, but rather has the TA's to grade various questions. Therefore, questions are grading according to several person's perspectives rather than a unified consensus.”
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41:
“The exams were extremely difficult, and far more applied than I would have expected for a basic course. Though the course was interesting, I was hoping for a more accessible introduction to the course topic than I received in this class. I learned a great deal, though I spent an enormous amount of time on this class compared to my other classes this semester.”
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42:
“I love the lab session! I like the way that I can make up by using the online record.”
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43:
“I learned a lot about epidemiology, although I feel that the material COULD be made a lot more interesting- I think that the "dry" nature of the course may function to actually decrease student interest and motivation in a subject that is very applicable to public health. Also- in term of exams- they were very well correlated to the case studies and important class material, although I found it frustrating when broad questions were phrased with a specific, focused answer in mind, along with a very small word limit (such as 25). In this case, it's difficult to try and "predict" what specific answer the grader is going to be looking for, when realistically several different answers seem like they could be right. I think it would be more constructive to either a) increase the word limit, or b)make the question more narrow.”
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44:
“Grading was strange. I gave the correct answer two different ways in an exam question, and points were taken off. I've never had this happen in any other course.”
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45:
“This course was very informative and helped me develop my critical thinking skills. My main problem with the course was grading because graders did not seemed to look for answers that matched almost exactly with the instructor answers, without taking into account the variability that would occur with free response questions.”
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46:
“Good course for an online course, I was interested in the material, but it didn't really make me that much more interested in it.”
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47:
“I enjoyed the course, however I wish the course was better organized.”
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48:
“I think this was a fairly well-structured course, especially for it being online. I actually would have liked to have spent more time with it, especially as it's difficult to learn new materials online if it's not something you're skilled at, but I think this is my own fault in not allotting enough time for course homework and exams.”
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49:
“EPID 600 was not my favorite class, but the course was organized and structured very well. I think grading individual/group case studies could have been graded quicker; however, it didn't really affect my experience with the course. I do like how the case studies were structured around reading articles because this is definitely a worthwhile skill; however, some of the articles were not written well which made it hard to interpret some of the data.”
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50:
“How the assignments (individual vs. group case studies) was very confusing. Syllabus conflicted with what actually due for first assignment (syllabus said group case study was not required, TAs said it was).”
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51:
“The group "discussions" could be better facilitated to bring added value to the learning experience.”
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52:
“I learned a great deal. The course is very well organized. Professor Schoenbach has put a great deal of effort into the development of this course. The course was very practical The case studies were good, the articles we analyzed interesting. The textbook is extremely well written.”
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53:
“This course was very well-organized. I appreciated the chance to discuss topics in the live meetings. Overall, I learned a great deal.”
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54:
“I feel this is a good course for those in the field of public health, but may not suit all people that work to promote health and well-being.”
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55:
“The organization and depth of information offered within this course made it a course that I found worthwhile and stimulating. The effort that Vic put into his lectures and the information he present helped me clearly understand the basics while introducing me to more compounded and complicated aspects of epidemiology.”
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56:
“Great course. Challenging but I learned a lot.”
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57:
“I really enjoyed the course but found the concepts and the content very challenging. I think that the professor and TAs could have been more clear about how the course was structured and graded up front. I found the information on grading in the syllabus somewhat confusing.”
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58:
“The course was interesting and a huge change for me, especially completing graduate coursework.”
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59:
“Very interesting course, however am not satisfied by the course outline teaching method. Sometimes it felt that questions asked in case studies/exams were from following chapters as well as preceding. Study week should start Mondays instead of Fridays. Also weekly meets should occur sooner instead of the eve of assignments deadlines. By then everyone has already struggled and completed work somehow. Grading in EX1 and EX2 left me demotivated and completely unsure of where I stood.”
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60:
“There was so much material - I wish it was organized better as to facilitate my learning (instead of me getting stuck trying to find a piece of info)”
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61:
“The course was extremely informative from a quantitative perspective, Vic is a great instructor, he cares about his students and conveying the material to them. However, for many others like me it is a required course and a very difficult one at that. Being that this course has students who will not pursue epid during the course of their academic career other than here, the course could have been simplified. At times, it seemed like it had nothing to do with Epid, that it was pure math.”
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62:
“I don't feel that I learned a lot in this course that I could apply. There was a large amount of reading and work at the beginning and much less at the end. Considering there was a significant amount of new concepts to learn, the amount of and type of assignments at the beginning hindered my learning. I would have found it helpful to have the first half of the class learning the concrete concepts of epi then spend the second half to do more of the abstract learning. I appreciate and enjoy abstract learning, however I need to have a solid understanding of the topic before I can apply the principles. Considering how much epi is in the news, I would have enjoyed having current affairs discussed or used as assignments. The article for the final paper was difficult to comprehend due to medical jargon and concepts which were confusing at times.”
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63:
“The TA"s and Professor were willing to go the extra mile in helping students understand the material and complete the assignments. Even though it was intense, I really enjoyed this class and it helped me understand my other classes better since I was looking at material through an epidemiology lens. I couldn"t even turn off this mindset at work! I feel this class made me a better student and employee, which is rare to find in a course.”
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64:
“Test questions were oftentimes dense and strangely worded. I think this is intentional to separate the wheat from the chaff, but seems to be a more effective way to test reading comprehension than actual epidemiological knowledge. I was consistently underprepared for class, yet able to perform at or above the level of most other students simply because I could actually interpret what was being asked. An example is that, in some other introductory courses, questions like "define odds ratio" or "compute the odds ratio for these two odds" may show up on the exam. In this class, some convoluted question asking the student to explain why the odds ratio is defined as it is, rather than how it is defined, or a question involving a more detailed calculation from incomplete information, might show up. Hence, even if I didn't memorize the definition of odds ratio, I could more effectively do the problems simply because I am a better problem solver. This seemed a bit unfair to me: I saw some students who prepared extensively struggle to truly understand the concepts, while I was able to understand the concepts more fundamentally and hence did better. Not sure what to conclude from this, except that success in this course requires the ability to "think like Vic."”
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65:
“Vic is very knowledgeable on the subject matter and a great, skillful lecturer. His lectures contain many relevant, interesting examples that stimulate your learning. The jokes before and after each presentation were perfect and a good start and ending to class.”
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66:
“Very intelligent, well-spoken professor. Also, I appreciate how serious he takes feedback.”
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67:
“Vic is an incredibly kind man and it is evident that he cares about his students, their understanding, and their success. Sometimes, though, it seemed he was offended by our feedback, particularly about the final exam. Also, lectures sometimes went into detail I felt was not necessary and muddied my understanding of new concepts.”
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68:
“The professor was rude to students several times and did not respond to emails. He also treated graduate students and undergraduate students differently. He did not require graduate students to take the exam which seems ridiculous. If he thought the final exam was not important, why force some students to take it instead of asking for a waiver or doing an alternative activity during the final period.”
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69:
“I feel the professor tried to connect to the students (e.g. with quotes at the end of each lecture). However, I found some of the lectures more confusing than the reading, which is not usually the case in most classes. I also think the professor goes into interesting tangents, or spends too long on a certain subject, thus running out of time to cover everything. Therefor, not all, but some lectures need better organization/ time management. I really enjoyed the guest lecture, perhaps more guests can be invited in the future"”
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70:
“He was great in finding time to talk to students individually.”
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71:
“Vic is a guy everyone likes, but his testing methodologies result in him assessing things (like the ability to fit answers within word limits) that I don't think he truly wants to assess.”
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72:
“Happy to have learned from an expert in the field.”
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73:
“Though the professor was extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the subject, the material was not always presented clearly. I felt as though the lectures were not straight-forward and sometimes incorporated extraneous information that took away from the purpose. The TA lectures in lab were often clearer and more helpful. Additionally, the questions on assignments and exams were often convoluted and difficult to understand what they were looking for.”
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74:
“Vic seemed very unapproachable and not willing to discuss matters with us. Many students were scared to approach him simply because of his strict policies, but when someone did ask him a simple question about the final exam he gave a very condescending and rude response. I feel like Vic is very knowledgeable about epidemiology and has a lot to offer, but he does not interact well with the students. For example, I understand that University policy requires that undergraduates take an exam. But when Vic asked for our suggestions, and we tried to give them to him, he simply shrugged them all off and treated us with a very rude attitude about the entire situation. As students, we have seen many alternatives to final exams that still qualify as a final exam by the University's standard, and I feel that our insight would have been helpful. But instead people are afraid to confront Vic because he comes off as very intimidating and rude.”
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75:
“The grading in this class was not consistent with previous classes, thereby changing the grading system for students in the same year/major. The material and tests did not really provide much addition in terms of resources.”
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76:
“The instructor for this course is incredibly intelligent in this area, so much so that I believe he has forgotten how difficult this subject is for some of us. I feel the material was presented as an "overview", however he tested our knowledge as though we had more in-depth material than what was presented in lecture. If he expects us to do well on exams, I personally needed more information than what was given in lecture or even discussed in our textbook.”
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77:
“instructions were occasionally confusing for case studies, appeared to be a lack of communication/agreement between various parties”
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78:
“His passion and vast understanding of the material made the class stimulating. What I appreciated most was that he truly cares about students- he wants them to own their learning and be able to flourish without a professor present. He always took our concerns to heart and provided extensive feedback, which was greatly appreciated!”
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79:
“The only thing I am not happy with is the fact that only undergrads have to take a final. I think the giving us questions and making an exam based on this makes the situation somewhat better, but if the undergrads have to take the exam masters students should as well. Also, I have many classes that still don't have an exam so I know there are ways to get around this rule. Maybe you could request a "non tradition" exam as stated in the university exam policies. It just does not make sense to have a final when the whole class has been open book.”
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80:
“The lectures contained a lot of useful information, but Vic's lecture style was often hard to follow. Some of the diagrams with all of the little people icons were just confusing when they were rushed through. Sometimes the problem was that he got caught up in the theories, proofs, and nitty gritty of topics that the big picture became blurred. His passion for the topic is evident, but he should work more on meeting students at their level and creating an environment that encourages care-free participation in lecture.”
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81:
“Great teacher! Love the opening and closing quotes/jokes. Knows his stuff”
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82:
“I really like Dr. Schoenbach as a professor and his passion for the subject. The lectures were interesting and thought-provoking, but I thought the course was structured very poorly. Recitations ended up being a 30-minute review of the lecture we'd just heard by a TA who didn't seem to understand the topic or students' questions very well. Case studies were much more difficult than material covered in lectures and took a lot of time to fully complete, which most people didn't since the whole recitation submitted one set of answers to be graded. This structure made absolutely no sense, and discussions of the frequent math-heavy questions were incredibly frustrating given that many people in the class didn't understand the more complex math concepts. For this group case study format to be effective, then it should be used for more role-playing, problem-solving, and discussion problems rather than math problems. Otherwise it would make more sense to have individuals submit their own case studies and cut out the group component completely. I also felt like the difficulty of the recitation/case studies didn't match at all with the more broad-perspective, basic course lectures. Students weren't prepared for the very technical questions on case studies because of this, and working in a group in no way fixes this problem or assists the learning process. Either direction (a more broad understanding of epidemiology and its perspective vs technical calculations) would be reasonable for this intro course, but the disconnect between the lecture and recitation didn't make much sense and was an inefficient use of everyone's time.”
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83:
“It is evident that the professor is very passionate about epidemiology and very knowledgable. However, his ability to make concepts clear and concise was sometimes an issue.”
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84:
“I think Vic knows the material very well and wants to provide students with knowledge in epidemiology, but his presentation leads to confusion and missed goals of what is trying to be accomplished.”
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85:
“I feel like there wasn't much effort to make the material approachable. There was different messages presented in the lecture and the TA lecture (I liked the TA lecture a lot but the in class lecture just confused me). I ended up not attending the lectures because they ended up making me more frustrated with the class.”
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86:
“Vic was very enthusiastic about the course and welcoming to students, but sometimes the material was presented in a slightly confusing manner.”
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87:
“The information presented during lectures was not always clearly communicated or outlined. Some of it was too tangental at times and I found that confusing.”
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88:
“I appreciate his sense of humor and that he would bring journals to share with all his students. He is a very sweet professor and I like him as a person. As a teacher, I truly had a hard time understanding the way he presented the material.”
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89:
“Vic is a very knowledgable instructor, though the size of the lecture was much too large to promote student involvement: lots of times I felt disinclined to ask questions simply because I knew if everyone asked questions, there wouldn't be enough time for Vic to even lecture! Having recitations help with this, and provide a setting to ask questions, though for the most part I had difficulty with the case studies and seeing as these were meant to be the application of concepts learned in class/readings, I wish I actually understood what was going on: in the future, please, please, please explain how and why the answers to the case studies were what they were as opposed to leaving that responsibility with other confused students.”
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90:
“Doctor Schoenbach is a quality instructor, as well as a profoundly genuine and nice person. I would encourage anyone who has a problem in his class to approach or email Vic, because he is one of the few professors I have ever genuinely believed to prioritize student satisfaction in his class. Also, Vic's policy on allowing late examination submissions due to illness, course overload and other factors is extremely lax. He is abundantly available to anyone who needs extra help. There is therefore no acceptable reason to cheat in his courses.”
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91:
“I do very much appreciate Vic's flexibility with the final. Thank you for taking grad students' feedback into consideration.”
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92:
“I have never been in such a terrible class as Epi 600. 1. The lectures were unorganized, rambling, and made no sense. Whoever is looking at this evaluation, please go look at Vic's slides for his lectures and see if you can made heads or tails of them. His lectures were useless and boring--I learned more from Wikipedia in this class than I ever did from Vic. 2. The homework took an unbelievably long time and was worthless. The questions were unrelated to the lectures, the recitations, or the book. Some of the questions were impossible to do without basically having an advanced degree in epidemiology. Vic would consistently ask questions that he had not taught us to do, that were not addressed in the reading, and that even the TAs couldn't understand what he wanted. Doing the homework was an exercise in learning how to deal with Vic, but we learned nothing about epidemiology. It is so infuriating to spend so much time on one subject, as we did every single week for the homework (most of us would spend at least 8 hours a week on one homework), and get absolutely nothing out of it. His questions are vague and don't make any sense. 3. The exams were exactly the same as the homework. Unbelievably long, completely vague, and pretty much unrelated to actual epidemiology in any way. The exams were take-home and we were allowed to ask questions to clarify the exam questions, but Vic would usually refuse to answer them. We weren"t trying to get unfair advantage, but most of us (and we are graduate students) legitimately could not understand what he was asking us to do in these questions. Many of us, a good majority, would spend over 20 hours on an exam. That is ridiculous, especially since we weren"t learning anything! 4. The course also drove the TAs nuts. They had to deal with these insane assignments and exams and all of our questions when they knew what we were "learning" was pointless. 5. The recitation sections are way too long and constantly having to work in a group really sucks. My group dealt with the class this way: we made a Google document of the homework and all of us tried to answer what questions we could before recitation. Then we would go on Wednesday night and Evan would give his TA lecture, which was nice because it actually made sense unlike Vic"s lectures. Then our section would split into two groups and we would go over the homework together. Evan would go back and forth helping us with what he could. We usually were on the right track with most of the questions, but as the semester went on the questions became more and more nonsensical and Evan would have to spend more time explaining problems to us. This wouldn"t have been so bad if we were taught how to do these problems in the first place by a competent professor. Usually some of what we needed to know would be addressed in the TA lecture, but at this point we had already done the homework and had to rework many of the problems. It ended up taking hours to go over the homework together (after all the hours we had already spent working on it). It was slow and horrible and we all we just so frustrated by the end. The last few homework problems were always these impossible problems that we could never have solved, using techniques that our TA said he didn"t learn until years into his PhD. We will never use the information we got from Vic, although I hesitate to even call it information because it was mainly the crazed ramblings of a completely disconnected teacher. I"m sure Vic is a nice person, but he is a horrible professor. For years now public health students have been tortured by this class, why on earth can we not get a different professor"" Is there no one else willing to teach Epi 600" It is so disappointing because I would love to actually learn epidemiology and I was really looking forward to this class, as were many of my classmates. We have no problem with working hard if we are actually getting something out of it, but there is nothing worthwhile about this class. It was a complete nightmare and Vic is an incompetent professor. Epi 600 needs to”
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94:
“I was frustrated with how little class lectures correlated with what we needed to learn in order to successfully complete case studies and exams. A lot of extraneous material is presented in class, which can be confusing when trying to determine what's important to focus on.”
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2012cd,
compiled 12/22/2012 |